old faces vanished again from my thoughts as completely as if
they had never existed. What had _she_ in common with the frail,
shy little child, her namesake, of other days? What similarity was
perceivable in the sooty London lodging-house to remind me of the
bailiff's flower-scented cottage by the shores of the lake?

Van Brandt took off his hat, and bowed to me with sickening servility.

"I have a business appointment," he said, "which it is impossible to put
off. Pray excuse me. Mrs. Van Brandt will do the honors. Good morning."

The house door opened and closed again. The rustling of the dress came
slowly nearer and nearer. She stood before me.

"Mr. Germaine!" she exclaimed, starting back, as if the bare sight of me
repelled her. "Is this honorable? Is this worthy of you? You allow me to
be entrapped into receiving you, and you accept as your accomplice Mr.
Van Brandt! Oh, sir, I have accustomed myself to look up to you as a
high-minded man. How bitterly you have disappointed me!"

Her reproaches passed by me unheeded. They only heightened her color;
they only added a new rapture to the luxury of looking at her.

"If you loved me as faithfully as I love you," I said, "you would
understand why I am here. No sacrifice is too great if it brings me into
your presence again after two years of absence."

She suddenly approached me, and fixed her eyes in eager scrutiny on my
face.

"There must be some mistake," she said. "You cannot possibly have
received my letter, or you have not read it?"

"I have received it, and I have read it."

"And Van Brandt's letter--you have read that too?"

"Yes."

She sat down by the table, and, leaning her arms on it, covered her face
with her hands. My answers seemed not only to have distressed, but to
have perplexed her. "Are men all alike?" I heard her say. "I thought I
might trust in _his_ sense of what was due to himself and of what was
compassionate toward me."

I closed the door and seated myself by her side. She removed her hands
from her face when she felt me near her. She looked at me with a cold
and steady surprise.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"I am going to try if I can recover my place in your estimation," I
said. "I am going to ask your pity for a man whose whole heart is yours,
whose whole life is bound up in you."

She started to her feet, and looked round her incredulously, as if
doubting whether she had rightly heard and rightly interpreted m